Slogging = sensor logging

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In the slides of his presentation (.pdf, 11.6Mb, great document anyway), Mark Hansen describes the concept of "slogging": sensor logging, which is very similar to the blogject concept:

Slogging:

  • What would happen if sensing technology became as easy to use as a blog or a vlog?
  • What would it mean for users to have “varying degrees of participation” in slogging?
  • What would happen if a Web grows atop a collection of such sensor networks?
  • Would we see communities spring up around data, around sensor logs? A neighborhood monitors its own air or water quality. New images of urban life are already being considered in instrumented cities

Support for the slog

  • Once filters are designed to identify higher-level events, how should we “publish” them?
  • Maybe we can again take guidance from the blogging and vlogging community
  • Would some variant of RSS be appropriate?
  • Perhaps we can consider specialized aggregators that serve the function of the backyard bird watchers or the amateur seismologists and identify events
  • Or, we feed it all to google...
  • And speaking of google, what would a search engine look like in this context?

And finally a philosophical question

  • When data collection and interpretation is not left to organizations like the EPA or other official bodies, there is bound to be a social shift

Why do I blog this? even though 'slogging' sounds like an underwear brand, the idea is relevant to the blogject world. Sensors technology added on top of blogs is also the idea of datablogging, that I already mentionned. It gives anyway loads of ideas for the blogject implementations!

An example of slog (oh man, I cannot be used to that word) Mark Hansen mentions is the Suicide Box by Natalie Jeremijenko and Kate Rich, which is nicely described by the nydigitalsalon:

The video element of this project documents the set-up of a motion activated camera aimed at the underbelly of the Golden Gate Bridge, the intention being to capture on film anything falling off the bridge. One can only assume that the blurred, unspecified objects shot from a great distance are people making the four-second descent from bridge to ocean. One suspects this to be true, especially with the view of the restrictions placed on the bridge. Subtitled throughout, the film informs us of bridge-related data: For instance, visitors can be arrested for throwing anything over the side or for appearing sufficiently despondent.